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Our road funding challenge

Local councils are once again saddled up with an increasing burden of taking an increasing share in funding local road maintenance.

For as long as most people can remember it seems Federal Governments have been cutting back on their traditional road maintenance allocated to local councils, this year is no exception.

It would appear that no matter whether it is Liberal or Labor in Federal Government the axe always swings firmly on the dollar value being announced each year.

With our current Liberal Government advising they have inherited a massive debt from the previous government one can soon realise it is only natural that they will tighten up all the purse strings, the one that leads to council road funding included.

Australia needs to maintain safe roads for travel and in order for us to achieve this goal a certain amount of money is required for yearly repairs and new road work. With the cost of wages and materials rising in cost every year it makes it challenging to do more with less and even so more challenging to just do with less to fund an increasingly costly road maintenance.

Obviously when Federal Governments to not provide sufficient funds to councils for such necessary work as road repairs it then forces councils to join in on rising their fees to ratepayers – hence more tax burden once again.

Clearly after all these years of buck passing between government, there needs to be a clear decision made as to sufficiently fund local councils in their necessary road maintenance.